Use Intent not Goal

I can't believe that I compared a bowel movement to a goal. No doubt my subconscious was driving that thought.

I would like to create a new framework for looking at goal-setting and goal-achieving using the design process and its related language. Our first project is to use the wordintent instead of goal. I'd rather this process concentrate more on the feelings and impressions that are invoked by a different language as opposed to the American Heritage's left-brain driven interpretation. To give my case a little meat however, I will defer to my favorite dictionary.

Intentn. An aim or purpose.

Goaln. A desired purpose.

Based on this definition alone, an intent sounds more desirable than a goal. An aim - direct, a target. Desired - I wish, I want. Let's look at the Latin derivative for the word intent to gain traction: intendere. Intendere is also the Latin derivative for the word intend.

Intendv. To design for a specific purpose.

Designv. To have as a goal or purpose; intend.

The key is the v, as in verb. I goal to lose weight? Or I intend to lose weight?

All rightttttty then. With all due respect to my trusted American H., it's time to shelve him, shelve the semantics and get down to design, which I wasn't quite prepared to do. I wanted more time for research and time to flesh these thoughts out. But that's noun creep. To get things done I need verb creep. I need to move from concept phase to prototype phase. I need to sink my mind and hands into the process, get a mock-up out there, play with it, test it and build a feedback loop to refine it.

Moving forward, this effort will be filed under the category Design Intent.